Each year Foundations Revealed holds a sewing competition to a theme. The entries are always amazing and I’ve always felt far too intimidated to enter anything myself. But this year the theme was “Once Upon A Time”, or creating an original outfit or garment inspired by a character from literature. It seemed too delightful a theme to pass up! So I resolved myself that I would enter, and the character I chose was Death of the Endless.
The Sandman is the comic that got me into comics and my absolute favourite character is the main character’s older sister, Death. Death of the Endless is a quirky, easy-going, goth immortal who is introduced to the comic in an issue called The Sound of Her Wings. It’s a beautiful story, one that has stayed with me since I read it.
Of course, picking a character from a graphic novel added an extra layer of difficulty, as the design needed to be an original design. And Death’s standard outfit is a touch plain for the kind of entries to this competition I’d seen in the past. So I needed to get creative.
For my entry I wanted to focus specifically on The Sound of Her Wings story, and when I reread it, I noticed that a lot of the panels where Dream hears the sound of Death’s wings are a blue colour. Also that you never see her wings depicted. So that got me thinking along the lines of hidden wings in outfits and how that could be achieved. Eventually I settled on the idea of making a wide skirted swing-style coat with a blue textured lining that would represent her wings.
I’ve never made a coat before, or done any tailoring, in fact, I’ve done very little sewing for my upper body at all, so I expected to learn a great deal on this project!
The first step was to get a jacket shape I was comfortable with. I didn’t find anything exactly right, but ended up using bits of a Mrs Depew 1950s Swing Coat, and bits of the Simplicity Pattern 8509, then took pocket style lines from a costume design sketch I ran across form the 1953 film Easy To Love.
This involved drafting using apportioning rulers, altering bits and completely making up the pocket placement, so I expected to do a lot of mock ups!
Don’t even get me started on the sleeves…
At the start the pattern was…. not great… but after many many mock ups I made something I was comfortable with! Each mock up got better and better until I had something made from calico that I was happy to move forward with into my final fabric.
One focus for me for this jacket was to make giant pockets, because I try to add in pockets to every garment I can. I worked these into the style lines at the front and ended up making lovely curved pockets that could hold an A5 sketchbook each.
Moving on to the real fabric was a bit scary as the wool I was using for the shell was gorgeous and drapey and I didn’t have enough for a second try. I marked all my pieces carefully, cut them out even more carefully, and then stitched them together.
I was amazed how quickly the shell construction happened! After spending so long on the mock-up, I suddenly had a jacket body in beautiful fabric overnight! Of course, this was just the start of the construction process.
The first new scary thing to overcome was starting the tailoring… I’ve never used interlining to shape a garment before! But I did a lot of reading about pad stitching a collar and how to stretch and iron the fabric to get it to shape, then jumped right in. After the first few very careful pad stitches and a whole lot of accidentally sticking my finger with the needle, I started to thoroughly enjoy the process. The collar started to take on a lovely swoopy shape that I’m very proud of!
I also added the same interlining to the front edge, upper back, and across the chest of the jacket to give it a bit more structure in those places. It does a great job of holding out some of the weight of the front of the jacket and flattening the wrinkles that were originally in the chest area because of the weight of the garment. My stitches are far from perfect, but I’m looking forward to creating another project with the techniques I learned.
The largest piece of work for this jacket was making the lining. After looking into various ways I could make feather patterns using fabric, I settled on arrowhead or “dragon scale” smocking. Usually this is done for small accent pieces on garments or for homewares… I was going to need slightly more than that. Using a rough calculation I decided to order 16 yards of silk and then settled down to the monumental task of smocking it all.
Before this project I had never tried smocking of any type before. So again I did a lot of reading and a few practice runs before starting on the silk. The stitching is reasonably simple, but it is very time consuming. Here’s how I did the arrowhead stitching for this jacket:
- Mark silk in a rough grid with alternating triangles. After doing far too many of them by measuring each individual point, I made myself a handy dandy, not at all jankey measuring tool by drilling some holes in a plastic ruler. It worked brilliantly!
- Tie thread off at the lower point of the triangle. This is very important as it isolates each little smocked shape so that if (when…) a thread breaks only one triangle is released.
- Pick up the other two corners of the triangle with the needle without pulling the tread taught.
- Tighten the thread trying to evenly pull each corner of the triangle towards each other.
- Pick up each corner of the triangle again with the needle and secure it with a knot.
- Move onto the next little triangle.
Once I learnt the stitch pattern the smocking became quite meditative. After spending a few months smocking most days I finally had enough smocked fabric to cut the lining. I was almost disappointed I couldn’t continue! I lay out the pattern pieces, checked as many things as I could think of, took a deep breath, and cut into the smocked silk. It was by far the most nerve-wracking fabric cutting event I’ve ever experienced!
I thought sewing the lining pieces together would present more of a challenge than it did. I was prepared to sew the long seams by hand, but thankfully they went through my sewing machine just fine! Up until this point I wasn’t actually sure if the lining would even work and it was a huge relief to see it come together!
I did leave some flat silk to line the sleeves and back yoke. The smocking adds plenty of bulk to the jacket and I needed those areas to lie smoothly. I considered using flat silk for the chest area too, but decided against it as the large areas of smocked silk just looked too beautiful and I didn’t want to break it up any more.
The lining bagged into the jacket and stitched in place. The neck, hem and armholes were all done by hand, but the facing was attached by machine. In hindsight, I should have left more facing at the hem to give it a cleaner finish and stop the bottom ballooning out slightly. I may go back and add stringed curtain weights to the hem at a later date, but for now I’m delighted with how this jacket turned out. It looks almost exactly how I imagined it!
Then of course it was time for pictures! My darling husband got up with me before dawn so we could catch the beautiful light of sunrise. We got to our shoot site in the dark and ran around taking test photos at the locations we wanted and confusing some early morning council workers.
When the sun started to rise we snapped some lovely photos that show off the jacket from a few different angles. The still photos don’t quite do it justice though. It’s such a fun garment to wear! It swings side to side as I walk and spinning around in it is better than any circle skirt I’ve ever worn!
We did manage to capture some video to show the coat in motion for a quick showcase. The slow motion capture of the coat being flicked up is glorious and absolutely makes me think of a giant pair of wings.
While I can see many changes I’d make if I ever embark upon a similar project, I’m very happy with the work I did on this jacket. It turned out more-or-less how I envisioned it, which I’m counting as a win in itself!
I’m particularly pleased that I was able to complete this project in time to submit it for the Foundations Revealed competition. My actual entry can be found on the Foundations Revealed site along with some lovely comments, each and every one of which made me blush! I’m going to try to join in for the competition next year as well, because this year has been such a joy.
